When I was a kid, my brother had a Gameboy and, like any little brother in the world, I was out of my mind with jealousy and rage. I
needed a Gameboy, too. Yes, I could play his, yes, we'd share games, but I
needed it in ways one can not actually describe that exist solely in the mind of children with sibling envy.
So one day, as I am recovering from a bender of crying and yelling about the greatest injustice that has ever occurred, my aunt took me to KB Toys. She intended to remedy the wrongs that were thrust upon my young life with not only my own Gameboy (a given, in my mind), but a game my brother did not own. This was above and beyond the call of duty and it suddenly made my Gameboy unique from my brother's, the perfect ammunition in the ongoing warfare of I-own-more-than-you-do.
After looking at all the games on the back shelf, I notice a box that seemed almost kind of familiar.
And I thought to myself, I know Dracula. I actually played Castlevania 1 and 2 when I was even younger (and getting Simon's Quest was probably the most harrowing odyssey of my young life centered solely around calling the store every day if they got copies in), so I kind of loosely had some association with Dracula in my head. Plus, I was a child, and "Kid" versions of things were always great and spoke to me on seemingly profound levels, so I had to pick that. "Oh, that's new," the store clerk said. It was new, but now it was mine.
I ripped up the boxes like they were opposing armies standing between me and total control in the car ride home. Gameboy? Awesome. Game? The coolest. Batteries? Hell yeah, motherfucker. I inserted those batteries, saw the Gameboy logo cascade down the screen with this satisfying ding, and then...the car stopped. We were home. Shit, we
did live really close to the mall. Okay! Not an issue! I will just go in to my room and play it. I rush inside, jump over the front steps like an Olympic runner, and then felt my hands as empty as they were twitchy when I realized my mother had pulled the Gameboy from them as deftly as a pickpocket. "I can't let you play games in the house when you can just take them in to your room and play all day."
This...was a cogent argument since I had planned to do this from the beginning. But it also limited my chances to dive deep in to Kid Dracula and my mother would simply not accept this logic despite all of my protestations. So Kid Dracula had been locked away behind the conditions of car trips and possible weekends. I also reasoned, years later, this was one way to make sure I don't eat through batteries as if I myself were battery-powered, but I didn't really consider that at the time. So I sat on pins and needles waiting for the next car trip when I can triumphantly pull the Gameboy out. Or until I could find where my mom hid it, either one would do.
It turned out the car trip came first and the Gameboy with the Kid Dracula cart inside was presented to me as my prize for enduring the tedium of sitting in the middle seat of the minivan. I flipped the switch at the top of the system, started the game, and suddenly realized I was way over my head. There were things here! Castlevania-like things but with transformations and bats and multi-stage bosses and DIALOGUE and what is going on here.
For the next year of car trips - to Texas, to Memphis, to Atlanta, to Arkansas - Kid Dracula and I battled against the dark hordes of Garamoth. We beat the
Young, Adult, and Geriatric Ghosts, shot down enemies coming from off-screen before they could even appear within the Gameboy's green borders because I
knew where they were coming from, I rode the roller coaster with no fear of surprise.
Then I met Garamoth.
Garamoth comes after a level I called "The Factory," because my knowledge of video games knew that any level with moving parts was called a factory, whether they were or not. It was this long level with shooting lava, falling debris, platforms that shot up from the ground, and ceilings that fell on you with no mercy (to you or the framerate). At the end of this gauntlet of death and spikes and anti-gravity tunnels, you meet Garamoth and, unlike his Symphony of the Night rematch, he is not a complete pushover that dies if you look at him the wrong way.
Garamoth was my white whale. He was my gaming obsession. He not only killed me, he fed off three or four sets of batteries on his own. Had minivan back-windows opened fully and not just a crack, that Gameboy may have gone out the window in a fit of frustration. Then, in 1994, on a trip to Nashville, I sat in the car while my father went in to Wal-Mart for supplies. I laid down in the middle seat, my legs bending at the knee and dangling off the edge of the couch-like cushions, when the unthinkable happened.
He died.
Suddenly, it was like I was being lifted up on a chair while people danced and sang and sang in Yiddish. I had jumped head first in to the world of Kid Dracula and emerged on the other side, no longer a Gameboy, but a Game
man. I excitedly told my mother who was resting in the front seat that I finally did it. She replied "That's nice. Now what?"
That was a damn good question. Existential crises are not necessarily the territory of nine year-olds, but suddenly I realized that a world without an unbeaten Garamoth is not one I totally understood. Mind you, I was
nine, so I got over it pretty quickly. But you never forget that first real battle with a game that only belongs to you, even if it takes a year of sitting in a car and many, many batteries.
Been meaning to get this for a while too.
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